Questions
by dreamer9981
Summary: The war is over. Harry Potter sleeps. Hermione Granger worries. Draco Malfoy asks questions that can't be answered.


**Questions**

To die, to sleep;  
To sleep? Perchance to dream!

            Harry Potter likes to sleep.

After the war they say he is exhausted from the final battle. They say he will sleep for days, weeks. They tell her not to worry. Hermione sits by the hospital bed and holds his hand and waits. 

***

The room is all silver and light, bookshelves and elegant couches, and utterly Malfoy. Harry is not surprised to see him lounging on the black leather, eyes narrowed to slits as he peruses a thick volume. Harry waits for him to look up and notice him, but he does not. Harry feels slightly put out, as _he_ doesn't know where he is, or why he is where he is. _Malfoy_ certainly knows where he is, and why he is there. Wherever that could be. 

"What are you doing?" he finally asks. The question is stupid and pointless and cannot possibly encompass everything Harry wants to know, but he feels he has at least achieved a starting point. 

Draco looks up slowly, completely unsurprised as his eyes focus on Harry. "Are you incapable of seeing that I am reading?"

"Well, no. What I meant is, what are you doing _here_? Actually, I really don't know where here is it all."

"What is waiting?" Draco replies, and turns his eyes back to the book. 

"Waiting for _what_?" Harry tries again.

"Don't you know?" 

Harry bites back a frustrated growl and slumps into a chair. The Question Game was always Draco's favorite. He would start the game suddenly, unexpectedly, and refuse to stop playing until he was satisfied with the experience. He insisted on playing entirely by the rules, and would take extreme joy in pointing out when he scored a point. Draco loved words and twisting them to suit his purposes. He also loved winning. The other Slytherins would charm their ears to ignore his questions, so Draco would come to Harry in the dark and whisper questions in his ear as they lay together. Sometimes Harry would have questions too, but never did he have the answers.

***

Harry Potter likes to sleep.

After he has been discharged from St. Mungo's with a complete bill of health, Harry continues to sleep. Hermione visits his flat in London and takes to bringing her own key to the flat with her, because Harry is never awake to let her in. She walks in through the door and into his bedroom, where she finds him wound up in blankets, only the top of his hair visible. She wakes him up and they talk, usually for an hour or so, but Hermione suspects that his mind is elsewhere. The words coming from his mouth are appropriate, but his eyes are glazed over. Hermione extracts promises from him that he will eat, try to get out of the flat more, see who is left of their old friends. Harry kisses her and settles back under the covers as she leaves. While Harry sleeps, Hermione floos to St. Mungo's, where she pores over curses relating to sleep and dreams. They tell her that he is simply dealing with the stress and trauma of the war through avoidance. They tell her he will eventually want to live again, once the pain dulls. She waits. 

***

"Are you dead?" Harry knows the question is impolite, and Draco will probably glare at him and arch his aristocratic eyebrow, but Harry has been wondering. He knows that, theoretically, _he_ isn't dead, because sometimes he is in that other place, and Hermione is there too. He also knows that he saw Draco fall during the last battle, green light casting a sickly glare onto his pale face. Mud sprinkled in his hair, and Harry remembers thinking that Draco would have been so mad to die in the mud. 

But Draco is here, and Harry doesn't understand. 

"What is death?" Draco counters calmly. He finished the book on Thestrals last week and has moved on to potions. He is not reading now, though. His gray eyes are focused entirely on Harry, and there is a slight smirk on his face. 

"What I meant was, of course, that I know I'm not dead, or at least I think so, and I was wondering if you are actually here, in some sort of reality, or if this is just a figment of my imagination. Because if I am imagining all of this, then I think I have the right to know."

Draco smiles now, and as always, the expression lights his face completely. Draco does nothing halfway. "Does it really matter?"

"Well…"

"Are you happy?"

"Of course I am, I just…"

Draco picks up his book again. "Does anything else matter?"

*** 

Harry Potter likes to sleep. 

Hermione panics now. Harry has stopped eating, and she can count each of his ribs. As she gently touches his face, his cheekbones poke through the skin and bite her fingers. She has tried to convince him to start working, to get on with his life. He went in to the Ministry for a week before he was fired for sleeping on the job. Hermione tries every bit of reasoning, every plea to force Harry to _wake up_ and start living, but every time he just stares through her with those green eyes that are looking at someone else. 

They tell her he is in mourning, and he sleeps to avoid the memories. She sees the newspaper clip next to his bed that proclaimed the death of one Draco Malfoy during the last battle, but she refuses to believe. She hopes that one day Harry will wake up to protect her and lead her, the way he used to. She waits.

***

            Sometimes they don't speak. Harry knows when this will be the case because Draco is not holding a book, and he does not have the look in his eyes that says he feels like playing games. Instead, Harry sidles over to the couch and melts into Draco's arms. Draco touches him, and each touch is a question in and of itself, questions Harry cannot answer in words, so his body responds in their stead. Harry burns and burns and wonders what death feels like. _If this is death_, he thinks, _then how can life compare_?

***

            Harry is burning. His forehead is hot to the touch, and Hermione knows the end is near. She found him in bed, asleep, tossing and turning and moaning until she thought he would burst into flames. The healers race around the bed, administering potions and charms. They will not tell Hermione anything now, but she knows they are losing him. 

            She holds his hand and asks him to come back to her, one more time. His eyes open, those same beloved green eyes of her childhood, and for the first time since the war he looks _at_ her, not through her. "Why, Harry?" she whispers chokingly. 

            He reaches up ever so slowly and gently brushes her cheek. He smiles. "What is love?"

            Then the hand falls, and he is still.

*** 

            Harry is vaguely surprised to find that the silver room is gone. He is nowhere, and everywhere, and he is scared. He is lost. He begins to cry.

            Suddenly, he feels Draco. He cannot see him, of course, because he has no eyes, but he is there all the same. "I couldn't handle any questions now," he says wearily, except he does not say them so much as think them.

            He feels Draco laugh. "No more questions, love. I'm done waiting. Now we find the answers."   

***

Author's Note: I've been reading the play _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_ in my AP English class, and the ideas of existentialism and the question game were particularly inspiring. Despite the fact that I've been reading Harry Potter stories for years, this is my first. Any feedback at all would be most appreciated. 


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